Iran has slowed the installation of centrifuge machines that enrich uranium for its controversial nuclear programme, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday. Western powers have condemned Tehran’s expansion of enrichment work in defiance of United Nations demands.
North Korea has agreed to wide-ranging United Nations measures to verify a shutdown of its atom-bomb programme, nuclear inspectors said on Tuesday, but doubts arose about when disarmament would begin. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would recommend its governing board ratify a new inspector mission.
Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations secretary general and president of Austria whose reputation was tarnished by revelations over his Nazi past, died on June 14 at the age of 88, his family said. The former statesman suffered a heart attack in May and had been ailing ever since.
Iran persists in defying United Nations demands to stop enriching uranium and is expanding the work, the UN nuclear watchdog said in a report on Wednesday that could open the door to new sanctions against Tehran. "Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities," the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
An 87-year-old man accidentally drove the wrong way for 7km down an Austrian motorway before being stopped, police said on Thursday. No accident resulted from the ride on Wednesday night. The man said the rain and darkness had caused him to go in the wrong direction.
South Africa proposed a compromise on Friday to prevent a global meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from collapsing over Iranian objections to the agenda, and Tehran said it would consider the idea.The proposal resembled a gesture by Japan made earlier in the day but was dismissed by Iran as not good enough.
With the precision of a surgeon, Andreas Rupp carefully wraps sensor strips around a 21-tonne bell in Vienna’s famous St Stephen’s Cathedral. Europe’s second-largest bell, nicknamed ”Pummerin”, is one of several famous bells across the continent being checked to determine their life spans, and unlock the secret of the optimum chime.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was suffering a crisis of confidence as member states met to debate how to prevent the pact from falling apart. The NPT binds members without nuclear bombs not to acquire them via diversions of peaceful nuclear energy know-how.
Oil prices rose on Monday ahead of the expected restarts at United States refineries and Nigerian presidential elections that some fear could spark violence that may disrupt oil supplies. The 10th consecutive week of draws on US gasoline inventories last week also had potential to exert upward pressure on prices.
An independent organisation that keeps tabs on glacial melting in Austria’s Alps said on Friday its latest survey confirms that the ice sheets continue to shrink significantly and predicted most will vanish by the end of the century. In a new report, the Austrian Alpine Association said experts measured 105 of Austria’s 925 glaciers last year and found they had receded by an average of 16m.
More and more Russians visit Austria every year to the delight of luxury shops and tourism representatives, but prime property features increasingly on their shopping lists, alongside shoes and handbags. The number of Russian tourists "has grown very strongly, especially in the last six years", Ursula Schorer, manager of the four-star Erika Hotel in the ritzy Tyrolean resort of Kitzbuehel, said.
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/ 22 February 2007
Iran has failed to comply with a United Nations Security Council demand to halt its uranium-enrichment activities, according to a UN atomic agency report issued on Thursday. ”Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report.
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/ 21 February 2007
Iran vowed on Wednesday to press on with its nuclear-fuel programme, ignoring a United Nations deadline to freeze uranium enrichment or face broader sanctions, but offered to guarantee it would not try to develop atomic weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained defiant as a 60-day grace period Iran had been given was expiring.
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/ 27 November 2006
A group of Santa Clauses was on strike on one of Vienna’s main shopping avenues on Saturday in honour of "Buy Nothing Day", an international initiative to counter consumerist attitudes ahead of the Christmas season. "Today is Buy Nothing Day; allow yourself a break," 10 Santas, in full garb, told shoppers.
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/ 23 November 2006
The United Nations nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation board of governors on Thursday indefinitely shelved Iran’s bid for technical aid for a reactor project due to fears it could yield bomb-grade plutonium, diplomats said. But the ruling left open the possibility of revisiting Iran’s request in the future.
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/ 22 November 2006
Most Western and developing nations in the United Nations nuclear watchdog tentatively agreed on Wednesday to shelve Iran’s request for aid to a nuclear project over fears it could yield bomb-grade plutonium, diplomats said. But the deal left open the possibility of revisiting Iran’s case later.
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/ 10 November 2006
Oil prices fell on Friday after jumping above a barrel the previous day in reaction the leadership change in the United States Congress and amid reports of an increase in fourth-quarter global energy demand. The International Energy Agency forecast a 2,6% jump in fourth-quarter global energy demand.
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/ 30 October 2006
Oil prices slipped below a barrel on Monday on doubts that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) would pursue proposed production cuts and as geopolitical concerns lifted. Light, sweet crude for December fell by 89 cents to ,86 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Austrian authorities have discovered the body of a man who apparently died at home in bed five years ago, a Vienna newspaper reported on Wednesday. The corpse of Franz Riedl, thought to have been in his late 80s when he died, went undetected for so long because his rent had been paid by automatic order from the bank account into which he received his pension, the daily Kurier said.
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/ 23 September 2006
The international cycling teams association will adopt new stringent measures which could see entire teams being barred from races in the event of positive doping tests. Currently, in accordance with International Cycling Union (UCI) rules, riders who test positive during a race are suspended while a test is carried out on a second sample.
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/ 11 September 2006
Opec ministers headed into their Monday meeting in Vienna signalling that they would maintain the cartel’s official output ceiling against the backdrop of falling oil prices. However, they were facing calls to react to the spectre of oversupply and a deeper decline in prices, including from within their own ranks.
The United Nations nuclear agency declared Iran had failed to halt nuclear work by a Thursday deadline, and Tehran defied the threat of sanctions by vowing never to abandon a programme the West fears could give it atom bombs. ”The Iranian nation will never abandon its obvious right to peaceful nuclear technology,” Iranian state radio quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying.
An Austrian girl held captive in a windowless cell for eight years before escaping said she had ”sexual contact” with her kidnapper, police said on Saturday. Federal police spokesperson Erich Zwettler had no further details on the sexual contact disclosed by Natascha Kampusch, now 18.
Oil prices rose on Friday as the market watched Iran’s stand-off with the West over its nuclear programme and amid concerns that tropical storms could threaten United States Gulf coast oil refineries. Prices fell earlier in the week after US Department of Energy weekly data showed a rise in gasoline stockpiles.
An Austrian girl held captive for eight years after being kidnapped as a 10-year old has been found while her presumed abductor committed suicide, police believe, resolving one of the country’s longest-running mysteries. Austrian police said on Thursday that a young woman found wandering in a Vienna suburb the day before had been identified by her family as the kidnapped girl.
A would-be robber was arrested after he tried to hold up his local town hall, mistaking it for a bank, Austrian police said on Wednesday. Wearing a mask and waving a toy pistol, the unemployed man burst into the town hall in the village of Poggersdorf, southern Austria, and shouted: ”Hold-up, hold-up!”
Oil prices rose back near a barrel on Monday, rebounding from declines the week before, after Iran insisted ahead of an official response to a package of incentives on its nuclear programme that it will not suspend uranium enrichment. Prices also appeared underpinned by concerns about supply disruptions in Nigeria.
Austria said on Saturday it has asked the Tanzanian government for an explanation after filmmaker Hubert Sauper accused it of targeting people who took part in his award-winning documentary Darwin’s Nightmare, an indictment of the pitfalls of globalisation in Africa.
The German-born opera singer Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, regarded as one of the greatest sopranos of her age, died on August 3 at the age of 90 in Schruns in western Austria, according to the Austria Press Agency. Schwarzkopf began her career in 1938 in Berlin.
Crude futures rose on Tuesday over Iran concerns after United States President George Bush warned that nations worldwide will not back down from their demand that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment. Worries over Iran’s nuclear ambitions have clouded the outlook for the nation’s oil exports.
Gyorgy Ligeti, the Hungarian-born musical pioneer whose use of texture and density marked him out as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, died in Vienna on Monday after a long illness. He was 83. Although sometimes hailed as the spiritual heir to Bartok, Ligeti’s work encompassed everything from Romanian folk music to avant garde, electronic compositions.
Composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution and gained fame for his opera <i>Le Grand Macabre</i> and his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, died on Monday. He was 83. Ligeti was celebrated as one of the world’s leading 20th-century musical pioneers.